Surviving The Evacuation (Book 9): Ireland

by Tayell, Frank

  I nodded. She threw the door open. Again, the warehouse was empty. Again it was full of chemicals: ammonia salts in multi-coloured plastic containers.

  “On the other hand,” Kim said, “if you were running this as a business, the contents would be worth money, and so you’d risk theft. Particularly somewhere remote like this with no guardhouse.”

  “There’s a third possibility,” I said as we headed to the next warehouse. “Whatever’s in the bottles isn’t the same as what’s on the label.”

  “True. What better way to store water than to claim it’s something toxic? However, I suppose if they were something practical, that woman would have used them.” She gestured at the dead zombie by the gate, and then reached for the door. “Ready?”

  The third warehouse was empty. There were no shelves, no chemicals, nothing. It was just a large, empty space.

  “Okay, this is weird,” Kim said. “I was about to say that if you stored chemicals here, wouldn’t you make sure the contents matched the labels in case you were inspected? So if you were worried about an inspection, then wouldn’t a large empty space raise questions?”

  “Except that this was Lisa Kempton,” I said. “She could pay people not to ask questions.”

  The final warehouse gave us an answer, though to a different question. It was almost empty. There were no shelves, but there was a vehicle. A civilian half-track, painted in blue and yellow. At the front was the bar for a snowplough, though that was missing.

  “Turn off your torch,” Kim said, switching hers off.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. There. Yes. I think… yes. Maybe.” She turned her torch back on. “You know the tunnel in Elysium led to a barn, and how I said there were vehicles in there. It was too dark to see more than the outline, but they were larger than tractors, smaller than tanks. I think it was something like this. And something like this could drive right over a zombie. It could crush them, like at that bridge in Kenmare.” She climbed up to the cab. “Keys are on the seat.”

  “Battery’s probably flat,” I said.

  She put the key in. “Yep. Flat.”

  “Besides, where are we going to go? And more immediately, we’ve got less than an hour before those zombies stagger past the gate. Either we go, or we check the ship.”

  “Well, we’ve come this far,” Kim said. “And we’ve been wandering around long enough to be certain it’s unoccupied.”

  The ship loomed over the jetty, and seemed much larger up close.

  “We’ll have to climb the ropes,” Kim said. “Can you manage?”

  “Of course,” I said airily. It would be at least a twenty-foot climb up the rope, and then a swing onto the ladder built into the side of the ship.

  “Just in case, you better give me your pack,” Kim said. “And the submachine gun. And the ammo. And you better go first.”

  My ego was a little bruised as I handed them over, and took hold of the rope. It was nylon with neon flashes every few feet, the kind a mountaineer might use. The first few feet were okay, but the rope was slick with rain and seawater. All thought of ego vanished as I swung out and over the water, barely holding on with one tired hand and another with its missing fingers. I had to push myself up with my legs, rather than pull myself with my hands. It was hard work, and made worse when I slammed into the metal hull two feet from the ladder. I walked my way across, and grabbed the rungs built into the ship. As they sloped outward up the hull, I think the rope would have been easier. It took a muscle-tearing age to reach the top. I pulled myself over, falling to the deck. Remembering where I was, I pushed myself to my feet, drawing my hunting knife just as Kim vaulted over the handrail.

  “Show-off,” I muttered.

  “Pistol,” Kim said, pointing at my belt.

  “What? Oh. Yes.” I put the knife away and drew the gun. Kim dropped the pack, then the rifle and SA80.

  “The MP5 has a shorter stock,” she explained. “I don’t think we’ll need to worry about sound when we get inside.”

  “No, and I don’t think we’ll need the guns,” I said.

  We’d come aboard halfway between the helipad and the super-structure. The deck was empty. There were no bodies. No blood. No sign of any struggle. The helicopter’s blades were chained down, and a canvas cover was tied over the cockpit. Next to it was the crane and the other covered object. It was a motor launch.

  “If you were stuck here for any length of time, you’d take the launch, wouldn’t you? I would,” I said.

  “Depends on whether there was anywhere to go,” Kim said. “You feel the deck. It’s springy.” She tapped her foot. I did the same. The deck was covered in blue-grey material that looked a little like the matting used in children’s playgrounds.

  “Weird,” I said, unable to think of anything more apposite.

  “Inside?” Kim asked.

  “I guess.” Something felt wrong. From Kim’s expression, she felt the same. We walked slowly across the padded deck, eyes open.

  Kim leaned her ear against the hatch, then the bulkhead next to it. “Nothing.”

  The hatch creaked as it swung open. Beyond was an empty corridor.

  “Bullets ricochet,” Kim said. “Remember that.”

  We went inside.

  The corridors were dark and narrow, and the cabins weren’t much better. Each had a pair of bunk beds, with a pair of lockers next to them. A table jutted out of the wall. A chair was under the desk.

  “One chair, two beds,” Kim said. It was the same in the next three cabins. Then we came to the stairs.

  “Up or down?”

  “Zombies would end up at the bottom,” Kim said, flashing her torch up at the next level. There was nothing. We went down.

  There were more cabins, this time with four bunks apiece, no table, and smaller lockers.

  “Kempton believed in hierarchy,” Kim said. She opened a locker. It contained a fleece, a t-shirt, trousers, underwear, and a pair of deck shoes. “One set of clothes each. Men’s and women’s. No segregation by gender. Does that mean something? Probably not.”

  “It’s all very military,” I said. “Like Elysium.” I tried the door opposite. “It’s the head.”

  “I never understood why they called it that,” she said. “Miguel, on the journey to Svalbard, insisted—” She stopped.

  I said nothing. As she’d spoken, her voice had risen. I listened to the dull echo fade. I thought I heard something come in reply. I pointed upwards.

  It was on the very top level, in the ship’s control room. A snarling face smashed into the reinforced porthole built into the door. I raised my hunting knife. “Ready?”

  Kim pulled the door open. The zombie tumbled out, knocking the door, and Kim, flying. I dived forward as the zombie hit the bulkhead and bounced off, almost into my arms. I lost the knife and barely managed to keep my feet as I forced an arm up under its jaw. My head slammed against the wall as we tumbled and rolled down the corridor. I was caught in its grip. Its hands clawed at my flesh. There wasn’t room to punch or kick. It was all I could do to keep its snapping teeth away from my face. My back hit the wall, and I pushed off it, but we were opposite the stairwell. The zombie’s foot missed the step. It fell backward. I let go, grabbing the railing. My jacket tore as the creature lost its grip and tumbled down the stairs. There was a chorus of snapping bones as it landed badly and in an impossibly twisted heap. White bone, dripping black gore, poked through its ruined clothes.

  “You okay?” Kim asked.

  “Fine,” I said. “Fine.” I took a moment to check that I was. “A few more scars for my collection, that’s all.”

  Kim raised the MP5. The zombie’s head twisted left and right. The fingers on its left hand twitched. Kim fired. The zombie was still, but the shot echoed in my head long after it had finished echoing around the ship.

  The ship’s control room was a vile stinking mess. The controls at the front-facing window looked mechanical. The equipment at the rear of the room was dig
ital. In the middle was a flat surface.

  “That’s not a map table,” I said. “That’s some sort of screen, isn’t it?”

  “That can wait,” Kim said. “Let’s find a first-aid kit, and then somewhere to spend the night, because we’re not doing it in here. With the door closed, this room’s been almost hermetically sealed. There’s a first-aid in the corner, but I wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t touch anything in here.”

  I bent over. On the ground near the display table was a phone. “Odd thing to have.”

  “Why?” Kim asked. “I bet, this time last year, you had at least two. Now, we need to sort out those cuts.”

  We’ve taken over the captain’s cabin. Actually, considering it is by far the nicest of the three staterooms, I think it was the owner’s cabin, originally designed for Kempton herself. She was never on board. The captain took the room for herself. I can’t say I blame her. The cabin has a proper bed, a balcony, an en-suite that doesn’t work, and a bar. The walls are covered in wooden panels, but behind most are recessed cupboards and closets, a fridge, and even an alcove with a small galley-kitchen. Despite that, there’s nothing overly personal in the cabin, nothing that might belong to its intended occupant, unless you count the pair of crossed cutlasses hanging in a frame above the door. They are real, sharp, absurdly piratical, and either antiques bought as a joke, or a hint as to what Kempton thought her life would become if she ever took up residence on this ship.

  It’s far nicer than my old flat in London. Nicer than my apartment in Pimlico. Yet Kim and I aren’t alone in the room. The ghost of its previous occupant, Captain Tamika Keynes, is with us. We’d have gone somewhere else, but the balcony gives us a means of escape if we’re wrong about the ship being empty. I know, even if we are wrong, the zombies would have to climb stairs and open hatches, but knowing it doesn’t make the fear go away.

  During our search for the sickbay and a first-aid kit, we continued our exploration of the ship. There are cabins built below the main deck, each with four bunks apiece. Below that is cargo space, a galley, mess, sickbay, an armoury, and the ship’s engines. There’s no entertainment space. No gym, no library, not for the crew. This ship was an ark, and we have Captain Keynes’s word for it.

  There’s a fuel store for the motor launch. It’s been partially drained, but there’s a few hundred gallons of diesel left. We put some in the launch’s engine, used that to charge the battery, and used that to recharge the phone we’d found in the control room.

  The phone belonged to Captain Keynes. We know that’s her name because she recorded four voice memos. From her accent, she was from the U.S. I say Georgia, Kim says Virginia. The captain stayed with her ship after everyone else left. This is a transcript of what she recorded:

  1.

  “This is insane. It’s utterly insane. Talking to yourself is insane. So I won’t do that. I’ll keep this professional. Oh… oh hell, I’m already recording. Damn. How do you— no, leave it. What does it matter?

  Okay.

  Okay.

  Okay.

  What should I say? The date. Today is June second. It might be June first. No, the phone says it’s the second. Er… Well, I’m alone. The ship’s battery’s out of power. I could charge it, but that would require turning the engines on. I don’t want to do that, not yet. If I do, then it would be a prelude to departure. I can’t leave without my crew. Not without Lisa and Locke. What else? What else is there to say?”

  2.

  “I went ashore today. It was the first time since we left Antigua. It was my first time ashore in Ireland. What a bleak country. I walked a mile west and saw nothing and no one. I saw one of the monsters, the zombies of legend. Lisa, you got it wrong. You got it so wrong.

  Today is Independence Day. Is there an irony in that? I don’t know. If you were right, Lisa, the British got us all in the end. I opened your brandy. You remember the bottle? The one that you won at the auction in Monaco. You said you only bid to stop that snivelling prince from getting his hands on it. Well, I opened it. Two hundred years old, and it tastes… it tastes disgusting. Like soap that’s already been twice round the shower. It’s strong, I’ll give it that.

  Where are you Lisa? Are you coming? Did Sorcha find you? She can’t have. If she had…

  Napoleon’s own brandy. Well, here’s to you, Lisa. Here’s to the old emperor, and here’s to Washington. Here’s to Lincoln. Here’s to Grant Maxwell, and all the dead presidents.”

  3.

  “Today is August ninth. My name is Tamika Keynes. I… I don’t know if anyone will ever listen to this. I… I think the rest of the crew are dead. It feels odd saying it like that. It’s as if I were the captain of an Antarctic explorer back in the days of tall-ships. I don’t know if anyone will hear this. The last radio signal we received was from Tasmania, two days after the nuclear war began. The message was unintelligible. It was human, but that’s all we could glean from it. At the time, we were making use of a private satellite network that Lisa Kempton operated. The satellites moved out of position. I don’t know how or why, but we were locked out. It must have been something to do with the war.

  This ship was commissioned, built, and owned by Lisa Kempton. She was a billionaire blackmailed into supporting a conspiracy by politicians in America and Britain. They had an insane plan to alter the direction the world was taking, to bring it back to an era of empires and oppression. There was little Kempton could do to stop it. Instead, she laid plans to survive it. This ship was part of that plan.

  You’ve seen the ship’s name, The New World. This was to be our ark. It wasn’t quite two-by-two, and we were careful not to bring any animals with us. Instead, we had people. Carefully selected people in thirteen locations across the world. Those locations were walled farms with their own water and electricity supply. Lisa knew the conspirators planned to drop nuclear weapons on their enemies. She chose the locations as places likely to survive the fallout. Ireland was at the bottom of the list. Too close to England. Of course, radiation was only one aspect of our actual apocalypse. When the truth of what they’d done became clear, she ordered me to bring the ship here to Ireland. We stopped in Antigua to refuel and re-provision. The island was already overrun by refugees fleeing South America. We fought a pitched battle to get our comrades out of the compound, and another to get clear of the harbour. That was before the bombs fell. We set off for Ireland. Lisa’s orders were clear. We were to evacuate our personnel, and collect a file on the conspirators. It would prove the guilt of those who were behind the abominations that plague our planet.

  What use is that file now? What use after the bombs fell? Sorcha Locke came here, but that name won’t mean anything to you. She was in charge of Kempton’s operations in Ireland, but her charity work on both sides of the border was simply a cover so she could monitor the conspirators in Britain. You won’t believe who they were. Quigley and Masterton. I suppose those names don’t mean anything to you, either. That’s how it should be. They should be lost to history. Why should we remember them when so many good people have died? Locke left. She went to collect Lisa. I should have gone with her. She didn’t return, and so I must assume that both she and Lisa are dead.

  As for my crew, they went south, to the refuge in the southwest. I told them not to. I ordered them not to. My authority died when the world caught fire. They have not returned.

  Hindsight is a terrible thing. I could have sailed the ship closer to the refuge in the south, and so the crew would have survived. I could have sailed north, taking Locke to the rendezvous with Kempton, and so they would have survived. Instead, I followed the plan. Out of duty, loyalty, love, and fear, I followed the plan. I have spent so long debating my motives I no longer know what they were. I know that the decision I made was wrong. Lisa is dead. My crew is dead. Our comrades in Ireland, and across the world, are dead. As dead as everyone else except me.

  It serves no purpose staying here, yet there is the slimmest thread of hope. If Lisa is alive, t
his is where she will come. If any of my crew have survived, perhaps they will return. So here I stay. What was it the president said; here we stand. Well, this is where I have stood for too many long months. This is where I shall die. I have left the ship. I’ve gone as far as the city of Limerick, and that is a place of death. This whole island is. This whole world is. Everyone is dead.”

  4.

  “Sue Dawson came back yesterday. I couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe she was the only one to escape that death trap in the south. There’s more to say about that, but there isn’t time. We went out this morning to fetch her bag. She’d brought files from Elysium with her, but dropped them when she was chased by the monsters.

  Halfway there, we were attacked. She was bitten. Infected. She didn’t turn immediately. I thought she was immune. She thought she was immune. We made it as far as the warehouses. She turned. She bit me. I left her there. I couldn’t kill her. It was about two hours ago. I’m still alive. I must be immune. I must be. I’ll go back to the shore soon. I’ll have to kill her. Then… then… I don’t know. No, I do. I do know. I’ll go and find Lisa. She didn’t come here. No one did. That means they stayed, and that means I can find them. It’s what I should have done months ago. I can turn the engines back on. I can set a course and… I can find… I can…”

  After that, there is the sound of the captain dying. There is the sound of the zombie coming back. There is the sound of the creature prowling the cabin until the phone’s battery ran out of power.

  “Depressing,” Kim said. “Sad and depressing, and it doesn’t tell us much.”

  “It tells us Lisa Kempton wasn’t on the ship,” I said. “And she wasn’t complicit in the apocalypse.”

  “If you believe the captain,” Kim said. “But whether or not you believe her, Kempton knew about the conspiracy. She knew what was going on. She knew more than your brother, and at least he tried to stop it. What did Kempton do? She devised a scheme to survive it. At best, that’s cowardice. At worst, it’s a fundamental betrayal of us all. Anyway, does Kempton matter? Is she anything more than another name? From the sound of it, she’s long dead, but what good would it do to find her? We’d hold some kind of trial, and— no. There’s no way that ends well for anyone. What I’d have liked is some more concrete information about where these other refuges were. Or where this ship was meant to go if Kempton reached it. Some more information about Antigua or South America would be useful. In fact, I can’t really see anything useful in anything she said. The captain was just another one of those waiting in place, hoping that the clock would be turned back.”